Food Lover’s Cleanse: Day Two

Day one fish disasters aside, my cleanse was off to a pretty good start. The recipes were delicious, and I didn’t cave in and eat the homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that were taunting me from the cupboard. Every ingredient I needed for the week was waiting in my kitchen, so it was easy to pull my meals together in between housework and British TV shows. As I posted on my other blog earlier this week, things broke bad on Monday morning when I had to pack up breakfast, lunch, and my afternoon snack to bring to work. So many things to contain. Pictured above:

One (1) tiny container of Greek yogurt
One (1) medium container of muesli (nonfat yogurt, fresh orange juice, oats, frozen raspberries, shredded apple, etc.)
One (1) large container of mixed greens that also contains one (1) teeny tiny container of miso and lime dressing
Two (2) ziploc bags, one containing rye crackers, the other containing chevre
One (1) small container of French lentils
Three (3) freewheeling produce items (avocado, apple, navel orange)

Between my meals and the make-ahead items I had stored in the fridge, like lentils and caramelized onions, I was out of storage containers. The other challenge of workplace cleansing is documentation. Behold! Cell phone photos. Muesli and iced tea for breakfast:The muesli tastes better than it looks, although I wish there were more oats.

As I mentioned yesterday, I swapped the day one and two lunches, so I had salad with oranges, avocado, and miso lime dressing with a side of lentils and Greek yogurt.

The afternoon snack was a chopped apple on rye toast with chevre arranged on one of the cheerful office plates.

Two meals and a snack. Easy, right? The came dinner: salmon with cilantro and pumpkin seed pesto, beet soup, and lentils. The pesto was easy, the lentils were already made, and cooking the salmon was a little tricky, but it turned out fine. The beet soup, however, did not. The recipe called for cutting the beets into wedges and placing them in a large glass measuring cup with a few cups of vegetable broth. After fifteen minutes in the microwave, they should have been tender, but I didn’t check. I threw them right in pot with the aromatics, added more broth, and simmered for a bit. It wasn’t until my immersion blender refused to blend that I realized the beets were still raw. This was at 8:45 and there was no way I was going through the whole recipe again. I set aside the beets and went with what I had.